Balfour bounces back to the top of the contractors’ league

Balfour Beatty has powered its way to the top of the contractors’ league table for March with a raft of contracts worth a combined £406m.

Balfour clocked up 38 project wins during the month, including the high profile £80m Warwick University National Automative Innovation Campus scheme, as well as a number of jobs in the energy sector including a £23m National Grid project in South Yorkshire and a £19.8m scheme for Scottish Power. The company also received a boost via its Connect Roads consortium - a joint venture between Balfour and fellow contractors Carillion and Galliford Try - which secured the £530m Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route project from Transport Scotland.

Carillion re-entered the top ten in second spot with six contracts worth £300m, with the Connect Roads consortium’s Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route scheme also boosting its ranking.

Laing O’Rourke took third, down from the top spot in February, after securing a contracts haul worth £258m, including a £200m 350-bed hospital for NHS Dumfries and Galloway. Sir Robert McAlpine rose three places to fourth with six contract wins worth £257m, including two major schemes for Capital and Counties - the £145m first phase of Lillie Square in Earls Court and the £65m King’s Court project in Covent Garden.

Interserve secured sixth place with £212m of orders, including the contract to build seven secondary schools for HLR Schools for £135m. Brookfield Multiplex climbed to fifth from ninth on the back of the £150m scheme to revamp Saatchi & Saatchi’s offices in Fitzrovia, west London for developer Derwent.

In total the top ten contractors secured £1.9bn of work in March, down 19% from £2.3bn in February.

You’ll find interactive, sortable league tables of contract wins here: building.co.uk/barometer